


All the Comforts of Home

by queen_scribbles



Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Buddyfic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-13 01:29:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16007444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queen_scribbles/pseuds/queen_scribbles
Summary: Some things never change, no matter how far from home you are.





	All the Comforts of Home

 

Between her years in the Dyrwood and this current... _adventure_ through Deadfire Archipelago, Adela had dealt with her share of homesickness. While she didn’t regret any of the things she’d learned (and very few of the things she’d seen), or friends she’d made, she couldn’t deny missing various things about home. Chief among them--more than anything aside from Mama’s cooking or spending time with Cousin Lottie--was hearing her home tongue. Given how little the various tribes and groups of Ixamitl had spread, and how content most of its denizens were to stay within its borders, she hadn’t heard Ixamitli since leaving with Odema’s caravan.

She enjoyed and appreciated other languages, of course. The musical lilt of Vailian, the complexity--and ubiquity--of Aedyran, even the beautifully practical flow of Engwithan. But nothing held a candle to the cozy familiarity of Ixamitli, with its conjured memories of smelling Ben’s latest dessert creation, or braiding Tia’s hair.

Seki came close, though. Adela had suspected as much from the day they fished Rekke out of the ocean and he’d joined her crew. His native tongue sounded almost, _almost_ familiar to her (achingly so), and the opposite seemed to be true as well. That had probably been at least a contributing factor to her wanting to learn. She would have anyway, because languages were one of her very favorite things. But Seki’s similarity to her native Ixamitli was definitely a bonus. She still missed her home tongue, though. There was only so much talking to herself she could do to fill that void.

><><><><

“....so you two want to look for new armor, Maia, you’re visiting the cartographer, and Rekke and I are buying provisions?”  Adela glanced between her companions to confirm their plans and received nods all around. “Alright. Beodul said the repairs we need will take at least a day, so no rush.”

She waited until Aloth and Pallegina headed for the stairs to Periki’s Overlook, and Maia to Sanza’s emporium, then tugged Rekke’s sleeve to get him to follow her. “This way.”

He nodded and fell in step behind her. “Where... where are we going?”

“Oh, Serafen told me about this place, somewhere between here and the Brass Citadel, there’s an entire avenue of shops that have better prices than here in Queen’s Berth, but slightly less questionable suppliers than the Narrows.” Adela made a face. “Only, he wouldn’t tell  me _exactly_ where it was. Said that would ruin the fun. So.” She looked up at Rekke and grinned. “Wanna go on an adventure?”

He raked wind-swept red hair back from his face and nodded, matching her grin.  _“Ta_. Sounds fun. “

She giggled and fought the urge to skip. “I knew there was a reason I liked you. It _does_ sound fun. Can we practice Seki while we look?”

Rekke nodded again, playing with one of the feathers Xoti had braided into his hair that morning. “If you want.”

Adela tugged the end of her braid and flashed him an even bigger grin--”Great!--before promptly switching.

><><><><

It took the better part of two hours to find what they sought--long enough Adela was beginning to wonder if Serafen had made it up--but they had fun doing it. Spent the whole time chattering in Seki, which she appreciated. Rekke had told her she was doing great, but her Seki still wasn’t as good as his Aedyran.

_Besides,_ she thought wryly as she examined a shelf full of dried fruit, _with Ondra’s Mortar between Yezuha and the rest of the world, how many kith have tried learning Seki? How’s he know I’m doing great if there’s no one to measure me against?_

Even as she wondered _that_ and deliberated what to buy, Rekke leaned around the display. “I found the fresh fruit,” he informed her, still in Seki. “What should I look for next?”

“Hardtack, I suppose,” Adela replied in slower Seki, reaching up to adjust her bandanna. “I know it’s awful, but for a last resort...”

Rekke chuckled, gently offered correction on a couple of words she mispronounced, and vanished back into the maze of the store. Adela turned her attention to the dried meats, but hadn’t been perusing them long when one of the storekeepers approached. 

“Did you need help finding anything?” he asked in faintly accented Aedyran, smile only slightly forced as he looked down at her.

She knew that tone. Folk in Ixamitl used it all the time as a barely-polite cloaked suspicion of their orlan neighbors. The fidgety clasped hands, the smile that didn’t reach his eyes, they were familiar, too. Her ears twitched back in response.

_Who says the Deadfire doesn’t have all the comforts of home?_ she thought sarcastically, before forcing a cheery smile. “No, I’m doing fine, but thank you!” she assured him brightly, also in Aedyran.

A muscle in his cheek twitched. “Alright, then, let us know if you need any help.” He returned to his previous task, but she could feel his eyes on her as she shopped.

_So is it the foreign language or being an orlan that made you suspicious?_ Adela thought wryly. She’d run into both back home. Practicing new languages under your breath in public tended to draw odd looks. Accustomed as she may have been to things of its kind, the moment was still enough to disincline her toward lingering. The shop owners kept watching her and Rekke-- _The unfamiliar language, then_ \--despite the fact there were other customers in the store. So she sighed, finished collecting what they needed, and located Rekke so they could pay. The price was, of course, several pires higher than her mental calculations, but pointing that out earned a half-baked excuse of recently raised prices and the tag changes still being a work in progress. She was pretty sure that was bullshit--there was no evidence of it--but the price difference wasn’t enough to fight about, and she _really_ didn’t feel like finding another store and hunting up all the provisions again. Besides, this store had stocked an apple-spice tea from home she hadn’t been able to find anywhere else in the whole archipelago. So she paid, waited for the purchases to be wrapped (Rekke scooped up most of them, a habit Adela had long adjusted to), and turned to leave.

They were halfway to the door when she heard it. In the smooth, rolling tones of a native speaker, Ixamitli floated up from the murmuring storekeeps.

“She’s got him well-trained, doesn’t she?” the one who had approached her said derisively. “Shouldn’t it be the other way ‘round?”

“Aye,” the other agreed. “Must be awful lily-livered t’ not stand up for himself. Lookit, she don’t even come to his waist ‘less you count the ears.”

Said ears--as well as her face--burning with indignation, Adela pivoted on one heel, looked them both dead in the eye, and in equally natural Ixamitli spat, “At least he has the guts to share his opinions of people to their faces.” She spun back and marched out the door. _Never shopping here again, even if they do have my favorite tea._

“What did you say to make them look like ghosts?” Rekke asked as they headed back towards Queen’s Berth.

“They were saying bad things about us in my home tongue,” she replied carefully. “They’re prob’ly also from Ixamitl with some of the things they sold. It’s also not a common language to encounter outside our borders. I scolded them for it, also in Ixamitli, so they knew I understood what they said.”

“Oh. What did they say?” he asked, shifting the bundles he carried to brush hair out of his eyes.

“Just the sort of thing any orlan’s heard at least a dozen times unless they’re extremely lucky,” she shrugged. _Not what I had in mind with ‘I miss home’_.

“You said _us_ ,” Rekke reminded her. “What did they say about me?”

“It wasn’t nice, isn’t that enough?” Adela mumbled, but he raised an eyebrow and she sighed, nodding toward the packages he held. “They think you’re a wuss for not standing up to me and doing all the carrying.”

He frowned and cocked his head. “Wuss?”

“Coward,” she elaborated.

Rekke actually laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind next time I’m holding off a kraken so Tekéhu or Xoti can toss little bombs in its mouth,” he said, eyes dancing with amusement.

“They don’t know what they’re talking about,” she agreed, snickering, before her mood tilted back south. “I just... I’ve been missing Ixamitl; my family, the people, the language, at least a little for five years now. Wishing for it, sometimes. _That_ was not what I had in mind.” She gave a soft, snorting laugh. “Though it does fit. All the comforts of home; tea, dried fruit, casual prejudice....”

“They don’t know you any more than they knew me,” Rekke pointed out.  “ _Tagukin_.”

She laughed. “I know.”

“When we get back to the ship you can braid more beads in my hair,” Rekke offered. “If it will help you feel better.”

This laugh was more genuine, and Adela felt her spirits life at just his concern.  “ _Ta_ , it would. Trying to look like a pirate?”

He nodded, grinning. “ _Ta_. If I do it well enough, do you think the crew will make me captain?”

She chuckled, shooting him a bemused look. “Do you really want to be?”

“No. You make a good _casita_ ,” he winked.

“Irrena teach you that?”

“Not on purpose,” Rekke said cheerfully. “But it was easy to figure out.”

Adela raised an eyebrow. “I think you might be even better at languages than I am.”

“ _Casita_ is easy, though,” he pointed out. “Especially here. Aloth told me you know Engwithan. That is the squiggly one we find on ruins sometimes, _ta_? It looks much harder.”

“Well, I had help,” she protested, thinking back to Icantha and the memories of her Inquisitor-self.

Rekke smiled at her, so wide the freckles crinkled into the corners of his eyes. “So do I.”

Adela smiled back and the two of them moved back to more frivolous topics for the rest of their walk.

><><><><

Once they were aboard the ship once again, and she’d had time to brew some of the divine-smelling tea, and taken Rekke up on his offer to play with his hair, the tension of the days’ events finally started bleeding out

“If you want,” Rekke piped up when Adela was halfway through her second bead-laced braid, “I could learn Ixamitl and talk it with you like you do for me with Seki.”

Adela smiled and bit her lip. “Oh, Rekke, that’s very sweet, but you don’t have to do that.”

He half-turned, almost pulling the braid from her hands, and winked at her. “I want to, Adi. If we are going to visit each other’s homes, it only makes sense, _ta_?”

She laughed and finished off the braid. “An excellent point.”

“Also, I think it will be fun.” Rekke settled back in so she could start another of the narrow braids.

“I will do my very best,” Adela promised with a smile, and started braiding. _My favorite tea, good friends.... now **this** is all the comforts of home._


End file.
